crossed the floor and disappeared, making never a sound. No other
living thing was in sight--unless those mighty steel arms, ever meeting
and parting might be said to be living. To come up from down there would
mean the ascent of three iron stairways.

Tom withdrew into the passage and quietly lifting one of the
fire-buckets from the rack, tiptoed with it to the door which was
directly opposite the passageway.

Then he paused again. He could open that door, he knew, for no keys or
bolts were allowed on any stateroom door. He could surprise the
occupant, whom he would find in darkness. If his suspicion was correct
(and he was beginning now to fear that it was not) there would be no
actual proof of anything inside of that dark little room, save only just
what the authorities had already found--an apparently innocent mess
plate. The criminal act would consist of simply holding a shiny plate in
a certain position. The moment a sound was heard outside the plate could
be laid down. And who would be the wiser?

Tom's heart was thumping in his breast, his eyes anxiously scanning one
end of the passage, then the other.

Not a sound--no sign of anyone.

Tom Slade had been a scout and notwithstanding his suspense and almost
panicky apprehension, he was not going to act impulsively or
thoughtlessly. He knew that if he could only present a convincing case
to his superiors, they would forgive him his presumption. If he made a
bungle it might go hard with him. Anyway, he could not, or would not,
turn back now.

In truth, he did not believe that anything at all was going to happen.
The stateroom was so dark and so still that all his fine ideas and
deductions, which had seemed so striking and plausible up on the
lonesome, wind-swept deck, began to fade away.

But there would be no harm in one little test, and no one would be the
wiser. He tried to picture in his mind's eye the interior of that little
stateroom. If it were like his own, then the mirror was on the other
side of the passage wall, that is, on the opposite side of the stateroom
from the port hole. If one looked into the mirror he would see the port
hole. All of the smaller rooms below decks which he had seen were
arranged in the same way.

Therefore, thought Tom, if one should hold a shiny mess plate, for
instance, up near the transom, so as to catch the light from without,
he could throw it down into the mirror, which would reflect not only the
glare but the bri